The Lone Wolfe

Thomas Wolfe was an unusual literary phenomenon. He was in the right place at the right time to find an audience because without the editors, Perkins and Aswell, his poetic and disorganized ramblings never would have been made into "books" and thus made available to the public. Writing as regurgitation.

I was never a big Wolfe fan, although no one can deny the poetic power of many passages. But I demand more efficiency in art I respond to. Wolfe, however, was my buddy Dick's favorite writer, the romantic outpourings of soulful writer a perfect fit for Dick's own romantic yearnings. So I got a good dose of TW over the years.

Surely the Beats were influenced by Wolfe's passion. And it would not surprise me if this tradition is continued somewhere on the Internet today, some blogger somewhere pouring out his or her soul, a rush of words that one day will be organized and re-presented as a "novel."

I don't think Wolfe is much in literary fashion today. I don't hear my students discussing his books. I don't see the books on the university bookstore shelves. But for a time, in the 40s and 50s, many considered him our most important novelist, my buddy among them.

See Today In Literature.